


and when I saw you again you were happy

by thumbipeach



Category: Purple Hyacinth (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Muffled Sobbing, You can cry in my wigs-of-readers bin I guess but don’t get them soggy, and you thought I was above this, huh, i invite you all to the misery, i spat this out please help, is he...you know, once again lobster brain is clowning, think again, this isn’t a cry for help it’s more of a yelp ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26274454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thumbipeach/pseuds/thumbipeach
Summary: because I was with you, too
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair/Kieran White
Comments: 24
Kudos: 66





	and when I saw you again you were happy

**Author's Note:**

> Those who are mining for gold  
> Get prematurely old  
> Trying not to disappear.  
> But I'm just a ditchdigger.  
> When I'm gone, forget that I was here.
> 
> -Ditchdigger, Tyler Lyle

He dies, he dies and leaves nothing behind.

Kieran wasn’t in the habit, after all, of leaving scraps, of scattering breadcrumbs. When he killed he left nothing but martyrs, when he whisked out of a room the only indications he was ever there were phantom footsteps, barely divots in the shadows. He dealt in smoke and mirrors, chiaroscuro. 

Kieran White _was_ in the habit of taking, and when he takes, he takes, he takes and leaves nothing.

So when Kieran White dies, it is only logical that even then, he leaves nothing.

He dies, he dies, and he leaves her to her own.

She stands on shaky legs, simple gold lace dripping down her knees, because she hadn’t prepared for the occasion. Because she’d put on a plain dress and come to the prison like it was any other day, and she was seeing him because life in solitary is lonely, must be.

If she had come prepared perhaps she would have worn black.

If she had come prepared, she wouldn’t have felt so broken, feel like any axis she may have gained had been stolen, wrenched out of its hilt.

If she had come prepared, she would have killed him herself, before he could go and leave her behind.

“It was peaceful--I can give you that consolation,” the guard says uneasily, and she does not remember his name, but his hair is spun straw and his eyes are deep set, and she hates him, she hates him because he’s not lying. She hates, she hates, she hates so very violently.

Her voice comes thick, like molasses, like stretched taffy worked until strings pool at her feet.

“Did he say anything—?” 

The guard tilts his head, appears to consider. 

Then, he shakes his head.

“No.”

He never did leave anything behind.

She supposed it was time, anyhow. She hasn’t quite accepted just how old they were becoming, and recently she’d tried to ignore the way his face had looked from behind the checkerboard of bars, haggard and worn, and the bastard _had_ teased her about wrinkles, but for some reason they’d always waved it off, never confessed that the shadow that would cross their face was because time was slipping like stones into a river.

That reason, that reason. Time. She hated time. 

She never seemed to have enough of it, and he didn’t leave any behind for her, because when Kieran White dies, Lauren Sinclair’s clock stops.

Then, because it is the only thing she can do, the only thing she can spit out, mechanically, as though she’d been pressed, she says thus:

“Can I see him?” 

Even though her heart seizes at the thought of having to look at his eyes closed in a simple sleep too deep to breathe from, even though she wants to scrape her throat raw at the thought of taking his fingers in hers and feeling only chilled bone, because in life he was always, always warm, even though she is afraid; she will do it. She is prepared.

The guard looks at her in what could only be described as abject pity, and she does hate, she does hate so. She’s spent a life hating, she’s spent a life brewing in salt and smoke and dying embers. But lately something, something blue and black and white, white, impish and soulful, something had stopped her from that, her vitriol. Her hate, her hate.

“No--I’m sorry, Miss Sinclair. They take them out immediately, the bodies.” 

At her silence he breathes harshly through his nose, as if to say that it is anybody’s folly but his own, and damn him, damn him. 

But damn Kieran White more. Damn that bastard, damn him for leaving and saying nothing. She’d shoot him here, she’d shoot him where he stood if she saw him again, she would if she only could.

She says nothing.

Then, she nods. Swivels on her heel.

“Thank you,” she says, and it should be for more than just that day. But should she be thanking anybody? Should she be grateful, now that her clock is useless, now that time does not stir anymore?

Should she be grateful that she is the one left behind, so that he does not have to bear the pain of being alone again? 

She thinks she should be. Because as much of a bastard as Kieran White was, he did not deserve that burden.

He takes, he leaves, he dies alone, and leaves only her behind.

———

“I can’t watch you do this.”

Kyms hands are on her hips and her eyes are a storm, and Lauren cannot find it in herself to do anything but laugh. As she rustles the papers on her desk, toes her badge, long retired and collecting rust, she laughs, at her friend's stern face.

“Do what, Kym—?” She inquires, and something in her voice does not reach, something sounds off, as though Will had gotten frustrated and pressed several piano keys at once.

Kym gestures angrily, to Lauren’s unkempt hair, the violet tapestries that lie under her eyes.

“I don’t want you to play dumb, you _know_ how I feel—“

“Kym, really—“ Lauren shakes her head. “I’m fine.”

Kym is silent for a few moments, and in that space of time she can still hear the wind blow, can feel the summer breeze fill the room from the open window, can hear the bustle of the small street outside, the thrush of women’s skirts against cobble and the clicks of a man’s heel, the steady thump of a cane. The world, it moves, still, it still turns.

Then Kym speaks again.

“It’s been years.” 

Lauren says nothing.

“It’s been years and still—still, you are waiting.” 

She turns to her friend, and her friend is worried, that much is palpable. Though she is much, much older now, she is still beautiful, her tawny eyes are still sharp and they still sparkle with life, life, life and Lauren feels rather like a wilting flower in the wake she leaves. 

“What…?”

“I _know.”_ She says, and moves towards her. She moves and stops when they are feet apart, and Lauren is not looking at her. She is looking beyond, her eyes clouded, jaded, foggy, at the little dagger she’d hung up on the wall. It’s rusted—he said it would do that.

“I know what it feels like, Laur.” Kym says, her eyes still unwavering. 

“I cannot hope to understand _why—“_ she breaks off. 

“But I know.”

Still, Lauren does not say anything.

The world, it appears, has still turned, spun, lived for another sun. The world still moves without him.

The world will still move without her, too.

———

After much prodding from Kym and Will, she goes to the central garden again.

It had been a while; she’d stopped going when they’d uprooted the daisy patch, and Kieran had always said it’s because she’d started growing her own, so she wouldn’t need it. She’d forgotten, how calming it really was.

She sits on a bench, folds the maroon fabric of her skirts over her aching knees, and clasps her fingers together, like she is expecting something. Her limbs are still taut, things that have been trained in fox down and alacrity, like they will snap at any moment if not always poised and ready. It’s been a while, it’s been a while.

She’d long since eschewed her work, long since set down her badge and her cap and become nothing, not an Officer, not a Detective, just Lauren Sinclair—like she was a kid again, and was beholden to nothing at all.

Just then a family passes her by. The man is young and the woman even younger, and the apple green of her hemline hides a young boy, his cherubic face tinted with rosy chill, his wife blue eyes wonderous, because to him, the world was still so very beautiful. Lauren caught their eye, and they turned away just as suddenly, starting down the path.

She wonders if, when people look at her now, they see nothing but an old woman, hair once like an inferno, now desaturated with age, like the yellowed pages of a long loved book, eyes once called pensive, lauded as topaz, now dull with time. She wonders if people look at her now like how the guard had looked at her all those years ago: with pity.

Pity, pity.

She twists her head, looks beyond the chrysanthemums and the calla lilies, and—

They’ve replanted the hyacinth garden.

Purple bursts from the ankles of the trellises, tall spires of lavender, and Lauren has to stop, has to stop and catch her breath. 

Perhaps they did it initially, all those years ago, and she just wasn't there to see. Because the Hyacinth left, left Ardhalis to heal in his wake, and he took his taunts with him.

Because Kieran left her, left her picking up the pieces in his wake, and gave her no apologies.

She can’t stay anymore, not for another second that the world will turn and burn and bleed and in which she will live a life without him. So she rises, collects her things, what little she brought, and Lauren Sinclair vanishes into the den of flowers. 

She leaves, she leaves and takes nothing with her, because it is not hers to own.

———

_“I’m not going to fight you like this.”_

_He says that to her so plainly, and she swivels to look at him. He looks so old, so old, and yet that spark is still there, like he is twenty four again and bold and brash and a fool, stitched with foolish youth._

_Lauren shakes her head, presses further. “This cannot be what you want.”_

_He looks forward, towards the circles of light congealing in his cell. He looks so old, and yet Lauren cannot fault him for anything, the way he has crippled himself._

_“It’s not about me—it’s about what I deserve. And I deserve nothing.”_

_Lauren, in turn, says nothing._

_He looks at her, his head tilted in a spaniel’s curiosity, and that cutting grin, that damaging smile, it graces his lips likes brushstroke, and they are both young again, and she hates him for it._

_“You can’t argue.”_

_She purses her lips._

_“I can argue with you until the rooster crows, Kieran White.”_

_He does not throw back his head and laugh, because he is old, now. Instead, he smiles at her, a real smile, the soft one she hates, the soft one she loathes more than anything, imparts it like a most precious gift, and a warm laugh bubbles in his broad chest._

_“I know.”_

_He doesn't lie to her, he never does, and that's the one thing he doesn't take._

_She looks at him for a time._

_Then, she cannot stand the sight of him anymore, like this, so alone, and so she breaks him further, leaves him be._

_“Lauren—“_

_He calls, she answers. She turns, evening falling and kissing her skin, dyeing her pink and yellow and white._

_“You’ll be back tomorrow?”_

_She does not look at him when she replies, and somehow that is worse, because if she had known, if she had been prepared, she probably would have. Looked back, looked at his face again. Taken something of Kieran’s, because he so often took himself._

_But instead the last thing she ever says to him is inadequate, because she supposed that is all she’ll ever be._

_“I’ll think about it.”_

_She doesn’t have to think, and the next time she comes he has left, left and teased her with nothing. She has nothing, and the world still turns._

———

Her nightgown still feels like it had all those years ago: like a branding, a burning, sleeves cuffed around her wrists like shackles, and yet she takes the lantern in shaking fingers and presses the pads of her aching feet on the attic landing.

It takes a bit, because her body won’t listen to her anymore. Not that it ever really did; her instincts were always too demanding, too insistent. But when she finally reaches the top, enters the dusty room, strewn with boxes and brushed with the bones of her past, she still resents her aching limbs.

She finds the box she’d taken from Kieran’s apartment, all those years ago. The landlord had threatened to sell them, but for some reason she still does not understand she had pried it from their grip, placing it in a box and never touching it, sequestering the part of herself that held them with reverence.

She kneels, lantern neglected by the corner as she settles, pulls the box towards her and pries the flaps open. A fusillade of dust whirls like snow, but still she does not waver.

Her hands dig, and one by one his life is unraveled. He never had much. No matter how much he took, he never left anything behind.

Her fingers pull out scratched records, a pot for a hyacinth, stacks of old books she hadn’t had the heart to throw out. Her fingers find the spines of _The Secret Garden, The Killing Joke, The Metamorphosis, Anna Karenina,_ and she did wonder, where he’d managed to pick up _War and Peace._ But that all remains at her side when she pulls further, digs into the summation of his existence and finds the things he’d hidden away.

A ribbon, she’d given him. Glasses, he’d never needed. And then, and then. Red leather, Bristol board, cakes of watercolor.

She settles back on her haunches, groaning, and the lantern light dances in a frenzy, licks the parchment with a reverence insufficient, and places her palm on the book. It’s unassuming, it does not tell her its story. 

She opens it.

Trees, flowers, books. The spiral of a church, the stillness of the pond at the Royal Palace. 

And then figures. A woman hugging her child, skirt fanning in pleats around pudgy toes encased in boots; a man hunched over his knees, nursing the rim of a whiskey glass; then, Kym and Will, hats and coats and fingers interwoven.

Then—

Then.

He’d colored these. Red and gold and sometimes silver, sometimes black, sometimes grey and washed in oriental lights. Had she really looked at him like that, with such hatred, such violence, such vitriol?

She does hate, she does hate him so. She did. 

And then soft smiles, rounded cheeks, full lips. He never drew himself, always erased the dark figure looming in the back.

Had she always looked at him like that? Was she once that young, that beautiful?

She has to turn away, tilt her head piously, so water won’t collect on the pages.

———

She writes.

The margins, they are scored, marked with her hate. Perhaps it is hilarious, pretentious, foolish, theatrical. But it is hers, it is his, it is theirs. 

She writes, and never touches the smears of graphite. Because he doesn’t deserve that. 

But what he does deserve is time, time she cannot give.

So she writes. In figments, in fractions. 

He cuts his palm, he laughs, he strings his fingers across her neck. He enrages her, he thwarts her, he throws her off kilter.

He loves. He hates, hates too. He touches her shoulders and tells her they'll make it through, he grips her arm and pulls her from harm, he takes her gun in his hand, and even though he cannot shoot, he tries for her.

He loves.

She writes.

———

She is the last to go.

She is the last to go, because that is her punishment, for hating, for lying, for being so blind.

She is the last to go, because it is her right, her tradition to be the harbinger. Lauren Sinclair, Lauren Sinclair, she is the last one standing.

She dips her head back into the pillow, grazes the prisms of light flitting over her eyelids and lashes like butterflies, and accepts her fate. She smiles, and even though her skin is gnarled and pale, though she breathes through smoke and ash, her smile is still the most beautiful thing, like he'd told her it was.

She leaves. She goes.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


She goes, she goes, and she does leave something behind.

  
  
  
  
  
  


———

When she wakes again, through the haze and buzz of sleep, she feels so very light.

She rises, her frock fanning out in lotus petal ripples, steeped in a font of clear water. She feels so very light, free, and when she runs her hands across her ribs and skirts them down her thighs she knows she is younger, her youth like that of a child kicking its feet and smiling, gap toothed.

But when she rises on curiously steady feet and begins to walk, she knows she is the young woman of twenty-two again, the woman who had hated so. 

She does not hate now. No, she finds she feels nothing at all.

She walks. Lauren walks, and walks and walks, and walks still further.

Her ears pick up chimes, bells, and Kym is laughing somewhere, Will strikes a chord, and the keys sing, sweet birdsong and maple honey, and still she walks. She walks, and feels nothing, only nothing at all.

_A blank sheet, and a line, scrawled in silky ink._

_My mind, my body, my heart, and you have ruined it, written only your name._

She walks, walks on a path that reads like dirt and mud and crags under her calloused feet, and thorns snake up her ankles and kiss the skin there, holy, pious.

She walks, and feels only nothing, until she reaches the end.

Her toes meet violet blooms, and when she looks out upon the hyacinth garden, she still feels nothing at all.

Where she would have felt something, anything, now she feels only rising, burgeoning hope.

She looks up, she looks up, and ever the thief, the figure that she sees takes her breath, if she even breathes at all.

He stands, his feet curling in the blossoms, and they crush about his feet carelessly. The sun is blinding, it swathes him like a snug bolt of fabric, and his hair whips about in a calm hurricane, smoky, beautiful contrast, a raven in daylight. He is that; beautiful, serene, and she had no name to artistry, but she understands his urges, now.

She watches silently as he throws back his head, craning his neck and spreading his arms wide, so he can accept the sunlight, can kiss the brightest star he knows.

Then, he turns.

He is young, he is young, and he takes, so much. He sees her and smiles, calm, joyful, flinging his arms around him, gesturing to the hyacinth garden, the rows and fields of apologies, of courtesy.

"Look!" He shouts, euphoric, his pink lips curving as strands of hair bleed onto his handsome face, and his eyes are clear blue and his face is no longer creased, and he is young, he is young, and he has never looked more beautiful.

"Look at this!" He laughs his mouth in a grin, wide, and he looks so _happy,_ happy as he bends, the white cloth hugging his waist rippling as he whoops, hollers in his glee.

"Look at what I can do!" He bellows to the sky, to her, and he can stand in the flowers without breaking. Far from breaking, far from taking. He loves, he loves.

Then, he twists his wrists, beckons her with a tilt of his head, a comely flush to his cheeks, and she runs.

_"Kieran,"_ she whispers, and he hears her, because damn him, damn him, he always would.

She runs, she runs, crushing the hyacinths beneath her feet, towards Kieran, towards her home, her partner.

_“Lauren,"_ he calls, and she answers properly, this time, fingers laced, scars crossed.

And when they meet, together once more in the hyacinth garden, he still takes. He does not leave her, not ever, but he still takes.

He goes, and she does too, and Lune only leaves one thing behind.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: hey so what if like Kieran White DIES??? hm
> 
> I’m not sorry for this 
> 
> Listen to Ditchdigger by Tyler Lyle, that is not a request it is a demand.
> 
> The italics in the last section are inspired by an old Hindi song I used to listen to when I was little! The lyrics, roughly translated, mean “my mind was a blank sheet, and you wrote your name in it.” 
> 
> As always kudos and comments are my chrysanthemums <3 
> 
> Insta: @artsofisha
> 
> -thumbipeach


End file.
